Creating SPCs and Setting Difficulties
Contents
This article isn't a set of homebrew rules, but an explanation of different ways the game advises to create SPCs, a comparison of how "difficult" the average SPC should be and an analysis of how the probability of success works in the dice mechanics of 5th Edition, especially relative to Difficulties. This is mostly written for a (prospective) Storyteller, but the section on difficulties and probability can be useful for a player too. Where I've found them, I also have HTR Corebook page references, but the page references are for VTM unless otherwise stated.
Introduction to Difficulty
To start with, p. 119 of the VTM core rulebook / p. 113 of the HTR core rulebook has a table with some standard Difficulties, pp. 407 - 414 has typical dice pools you might want to know, p. 409 has Difficulties for Feats of Strength and pp. 411 - 412 has more detailed Difficulties for social situations and circumstantial modifiers (e.g. if you're asking someone who dislikes you to do something risky). I recommend checking these sections before continuing, as these are the basics.
What should SPCs be like?
There are several different ways that the game (and community) suggests writing up an SPC. This all assumes that you know and plan the SPC in advance, but elements of it are also relevant for SPCs you make up on the fly.
1) Like PCs
Just follow the character creation guidelines for PCs (e.g. Corebook pp. 136 - 137), and add extra stats / traits / XP as needed. Check out this list of published SPCs by Eunomiac for some XP range ideas.
- Pros: Has everything you need for every character
- Cons: Extremely time intensive for most purposes
2) Simplified Statblocks
Examples are the ones in the Antagonists section of the Corebook (pp. 369 - 376). You might just list Physical, Social and Mental and then Exceptional pools. For most rolls you use the relevant type - eg Athletics, Brawl and Drive would all use Physical - unless it has an exceptional, the you use that instead. That allows you to have a person who's fairly physical, but really good at brawling.
- Pros: Quicker than full PC stats, but more detailed than other methods
- Cons: Still quite a bit of work
3) Supporting Characters
Examples are the ones in the Supporting Characters sidebar of the HTR Corebook (p. 74), which just list key action pools, e.g. Athletics, Firearms, Investigation, and not things they're not likely to ever do.
- Pros: Much quicker than PC stats or even simplified SPCs
- Cons: Has some gaps which you might need to improvise for
4) General Difficulties
A bit like the above, but instead of rolling dice, you arbitrarily give a Difficulty players need to roll against in order to beat them against anything. Generally this has a normal and exceptional difficulty, like skills, eg as portrayed in Cults of the Blood Gods (p. 15). Example would be a skilled Hunter with Difficulty: 3/2 - players would have to beat Difficulty 2 for most things, and 3 for the exceptional things that the hunter is particularly good at, such as firearms or hiding from their investigation.
- Pros: Really, really simple and saves time in play
- Cons: Loses nuance, don't have emergent fun from messy criticals
5) Simple Antagonists
Single difficulty which, when beaten, completely defeats the opponent basically regardless of the roll. Eg Thug: Difficulty 3. If you want to roll dice, roll dice equal to 2x the Difficulty. Detailed more in the Corebook (p. 370).
- Pros: Simpler still than anything else
- Cons: Mainly for mooks / side characters, and not very satisfied for interesting SPCs
6) Characteristics Only
Just outline Convictions and Ambition, as well as possibly Touchstones and possibly a vague area of influence - eg downtown, Elysium, sewers, hospitals, finance sector. For characters which may be encountered, personality too. Then only flesh out the stats when players are likely to encounter them in a conflict. This is mainly intended for the Kindred of a city who won't be direct antagonists, but will come up along the way.
For instance, you might identify that your stereotypical Prince is haughty, never talks directly to neonates and instead speaks via a ghoul, has the sole Conviction "Never submit, never be lesser", an Ambition to "Destroy Anarchs in the domain", and has particular influence in the police force and local government.
- Pros: Much quicker
- Cons: Need to improvise quickly if a half-statted SPC is suddenly challenged
How difficult / powerful should SPCs be?
Test difficulty comparisons
Based on the Difficulty charts and some of the example antagonists, you may start to get a general feel for many SPCs your players will come up against. Many characters have effective Difficulties of 2 or 3 for many things, or maybe as high as 4 for quite competent opponents (or 4/6 dice, or 8 for skilled ones). Truly story-defining antagonists may have much higher effective Difficulties / dice pools.
This is equivalent on the Difficulty chart to a Straightforward, Moderate or Challenging Difficulty (Difficulty 2/3/4 or rough dice pool of 4/6/8, respectively). If you need to come up with a random SPC's roll or difficulty on the fly, this is a good set of things to think of.
Comparison to SPC Background templates
Another way to look at things, especially if you're trying to create someone on the fly, particularly a normal mortal, is to look the mortal templates on the sidebar in p. 185 of the Corebook.
For instance, many mental Disciplines ask for Attribute rolls without any Skills involved, and an average mortal has two Attributes at 3, three at 2 and the others at 1. As a result, an "Average Mortal" is basically never going to resist Dominate with more than 6 dice / Difficulty 3, and that's only if they're particularly strong mentally/socially. The average "Average Mortal" probably rolls 3 / 4 dice, so Difficulty 2 at the most.
These basic stat rules can start to give you a flavour for how many things an SPC should be good at and how hard challenges should be - and even Kindred can follow this rule. Whilst most Kindred are boosted by Blood Surge and Disciplines, it's still a rare, dangerous Kindred who should have the base stats of a Deadly Mortal.
(That said, always bear in mind that if the SPC is going up against the entire coterie at once, the coterie has a massive advantage in any conflict due to being able to do many things at once, whereas an SPC can just do one thing. This goes for direct combat, but also for conflict over the course of a story. There's a reason powerful Kindred have minions.)
Published SPCs
Finally, this list of SPCs by Eunomiac gives a full breakdown of how powerful published SPCs are in terms of traits and the XP cost of them, which may be handy for comparison. Warning to players: heavy spoilers!
Roll Probabilities
Throughout this I've been simplifying things a bit. Given that 1 - 5 is a failure and 6 - 10 a success, the immediate thought (and one which the book promotes) is that every 2 dice = 1 Success and therefore another Difficulty rating that can be beaten, on average. Therefore, if you want someone to have a 50% chance of succeeding at Difficulty 3, they should have 6 dice.
The truth is that this is very simplified, particularly for players, vampires and high dice pools - and the three often come together. On top of that, players have the particular option of Win at a Cost.
Improving the odds
A note on this section: I haven't calculated the probabilities here myself, but instead cheated and used the dicebot Thirst, which simulates 10,000 rolls and then calculates the probability from that.
- Critical Successes - Rolling two 10s is a critical success, which leads to four successes from two dice. This translates to a completely unintuitive probability curve as dice pools rise. As a result, a dice pool of ten against Difficulty 5 has more like a 76% chance of winning than the 50% you might think. Likewise, a dice pool of five has ~8.5% chance of winning vs Difficulty 5 rather than the ~3% which might be expected. This explodes out as dice pools rise, such that at about seventeen dice, the probability get very, very wonky.
- Blood Surge - A starting neonate can gain two dice to most pools for only a Rouse Check. This turns an untrained person to a skilled one, and a skilled person to an expert. It also turns five dice vs Difficulty 5 to seven dice vs Difficulty 5, raising the odds to 30% success rate, from 8.5%.
- Willpower - Players can - and are strongly encouraged to - use Willpower to re-roll up to three non-Hunger dice, which greatly increases chance of success whenever the character is not very Hungry. e.g. ten dice vs Difficulty 5 becomes more like 88% chance of winning if three dice are re-rolled, and five dice vs Difficulty 5 becomes more like 32% chance. This is a massive difference. It's also really hard to intuitively grasp or predict, especially as someone may not be able to re-roll three dice due to their Hunger level - maybe they can only re-roll two, or just one, or none at all! (It's worth noting that SPCs can almost certainly not use Willpower to reroll in VTM, but can in HTR. As it's probably not fun or typical to use them for every encounter, let alone the inherent disparities between resource expenditure in games for PCs compared with SPCs, so I'm disregarding this for the sake of this discussion.)
- Win at a cost - For any roll, including conflicts, a Storyteller can give the player an option to win their roll, but at a cost (which is agreed between player and Storyteller before accepting the offer). This means that you can safely put quite difficult tests in front of players if you have the means for them to suffer as a result of failure, whilst still not preventing the narrative from progressing. (See Corebook p. 121.)
To press this point more, even ten dice vs Difficulty 10 is more like 18% with crits and Willpower, or 35% if you Blood Surge it to twelve dice - and then if they fail, you could still allow them to Win at a Cost anyway.
What does this mean in practice?
Let's take something a Kindred is slightly above average at - they have three in an Attribute and two in a Skill, for a dice pool of five. Against a Challenging task (Difficulty 4), they have about 23% chance of succeeding. Add in Blood Surge + Willpower and it becomes 84%.
Now take something that the Kindred is very bad at - they have just 2 in the Attribute and nothing in the skill, and need to achieve something Moderately Challenging (Difficulty 3). They have about 1% chance of succeeding. This is where the average mortal SPC probably stops. For a vampiric PC, on the other hand, they can Blood Surge and Willpower it and get to 73% chance - and then could even be offered to win at a cost by the Storyteller if it's a normal test.
This translates to combat, too: for that same poorly skilled Kindred, a 73% chance of 3 successes with Blood Surge + Willpower creates better odds than an SPC rolling 6 dice with no Willpower. That 6 dice could be a skilled standard police officer, or gang member, and the bog-standard Kindred has better odds than they do. If it's lethal combat, the Kindred also suffers less for failing a roll and being hit due to not taking Aggravated Health damage from guns and knives.
Winner takes all
The final thing to note is about conflicts. In any contested roll, the winner takes all. The loser does no damage, and takes damage (or other effect) from the opponent, whilst the winner has the reverse. As a result, balance is a fine line, especially with wonky probability going on. You may find that sometimes, players defeat their opposition with ease, and other times the reverse is true. This is absolutely fine, and should be embraced - just remember to consider contingency plans!
Credits
Author: Alratan
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